Sunday evening, I saw this story on the NBC Nightly News.
Video.
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The violence is horrific.
More on the "brutal anti-gay attacks," from the New York Daily News:
Eight gay-hating Bronx gangbangers accused of one of the city's most savage crimes in years appeared in court Sunday to face charges in what Mayor Bloomberg called an act of "pure evil."
They stand accused of torturing and terrorizing a gay man, his older brother, and two teenagers over the course of many hours Oct. 3 in Morris Heights.
"Is it true you're a fag?" ringleader Idelfonso (Cheto) Mendez allegedly demanded of his bound victims before punching them in the face.
Prosecutors said he repeated the query and the punch over and over again.
The eight were hit with a slew of charges including gang assault, sexual assault, robbery, weapons possession and hate crimes. The gang assault count alone is enough to put them away for 25 years.
None of the defendants - Mendez, 23; Elmer Confresi, 23; David Rivera, 21; Bryan Almonte, 17; Steven Caraballo, 17; Nelson Falu, 17; Denis Peitars, 17; and Brian Cepeda, 16, all of the Bronx - entered pleas.
They are due back in court Oct. 14. Only Peitars and Caraballo were offered the chance to post $50,000 cash bail.
A ninth suspect, Rudy Vargas-Perez, 22, remained at large.
"Given how much we know, we'll get him," Bloomberg said.
Speaking at East Ward Baptist Church in Harlem, the mayor on Sunday called the attack "pure evil."
"Their heinous crime, I think, is matched only by their warped mindsets," he said.
...Members of a penny-ante crew calling themselves the Latin King Goonies, the defendants are accused of a depraved rampage that began at 3 a.m. on Oct. 3, after learning a 17-year-old wannabe recruit had been seen with a 30-year-old gay man.
In the abandoned three-story house at 1910 Osborne Place, they used as a clubhouse - and turned into a makeshift torture chamber - they allegedly stripped the boy naked, beat him, slashed him with a box cutter and sodomized him with a plunger handle.
That evening, a second 17-year-old was tied up in the house and interrogated about his relationship the 30-year-old man.
They then allegedly lured the older man to the house, stripped him, tied him to a chair and forced the 17-year-old to hit him in the face and burn his genitals with cigarettes as they jeered.
They then allegedly battered the older man with chains and sodomized him with a small baseball bat.
Some of the gangbangers also went to his 40-year-old brother's apartment and beat him, and forcing him to give them $1,000 dollars by putting him on the phone with his terrified captive brother.
They left him tied to his bed with his eyes, nose and mouth covered with tape, close to suffocation.
The other victims were allowed to go free but warned they would be killed if they revealed what happened to them.
The gangbangers allegedly cleaned their torture chamber with bleach, ripped up carpet and repainted the walls in an attempt to cover their tracks.
Tipsters told police what happened, and cops began arresting the crew Wednesday.
Here's more, from the Associated Press:
Gay men and women live openly in the largely Hispanic neighborhood where the Oct. 3 beatings took place, Morris Heights, and while residents were disturbed by some past violent behavior blamed on the defendants, some said they hadn't previously targeted homosexuals.
City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, who is openly gay, and other elected officials went to the empty brick town house where the attacks occurred and passed out leaflets.
"People were very, very clear that they wanted it to be known that the acts of these individuals do not represent their neighborhood," Quinn said. "They were as stunned as anyone that something so violent, so premeditated ... could happen here."
OK.
I've been hearing about this story for a while now and my reaction is the same. I continue to be troubled about the way it's being reported.
The NBC report doesn't emphasize that these are the actions of a GANG. The emphasis is on the abuse of gays.
Read about the behavior of the members immersed in GANG culture, from the New York Daily News:
The members of a sadistic Bronx crew accused of torturing a man and two teens because they were gay claimed the gang's leaders forced them to participate - or become victims themselves.
Police sources said several members of the Latin King Goonies told detectives they would have been slashed and beaten if they did not help torment the defenseless victims.
The threats were allegedly made by ringleader Ildefonso (Cheto) Mendez, who orchestrated the homophobic assaults after learning that a 17-year-old gang recruit was gay. That recruit was made to watch as they sodomized his older boyfriend with a miniature baseball bat - and the teen was then forced to burn his lover with cigarettes.
...The sick attacks - the latest in a surge in anti-gay incidents across the region - outraged public leaders.
"When any New Yorker is attacked because of who they are or who they love, the fabric that binds us together is torn," Mayor Bloomberg said yesterday.
The torture began early last Sunday in an abandoned Morris Heights building - nicknamed the Goonie House - where gang members frequently partied. The 30-year-old victim's older brother was later beaten and robbed at his Bronx home.
Mendez was charged with robbery in 2005 and with gun possession in 2007 and 2009, records show. Neighbors at his E. 197th St. building described Mendez rounding up friends to torture a stray cat two months ago. "One of the cat's eyes was out and one of these [guys] was poking its eye socket with a stick," said the neighbor. "They were cheering like they just scored a touchdown."
The story of them torturing the stray cat is sick and sadistic. These thugs have no respect for any life. They have no compassion. In short, they're bad people.
No question, the brutal attacks carried out by the Latin King Goonies were heinous crimes. The members that engaged in the torturing of the three individuals are animals.
I'm glad they're off the streets. They aren't fit to live among law-abiding citizens. Clearly, they're a danger to the community.
There should be no confusion about where I stand on the attacks. I'm sickened by them. I want the thugs to face the maximum punishment for their criminal behavior.
What bothers me though is the ridiculousness of the outrage over known thugs behaving like thugs.
It's the hate crime angle, the anti-gay aspect of the attacks, that's bringing this story so much national attention. But there's more to this than "hating gay people."
The violence and cruelty permeate the way of life of the Latin King Goonies. It's a GANG thing.
Another thing being lost in the coverage of the attacks is the fact that one of the victims was a recruit.
One of the victims wanted to be a member of the Latin King Goonies. He wanted to prey on others, behave violently, and break the law.
Of course, I'm not saying that because the victim was a wannabe member that he somehow got what he deserved. Absolutely not. But I think it's important to highlight that those involved are thugs. They're criminals.
It seems to me that there's a lot of posturing happening. Bloomberg is outraged over the "pure evil" of the attacks on gays, but he's not pointing out that these were thugs, members of a GANG. Where's the outrage about that?
Gay men and women live openly in the largely Hispanic neighborhood where the Oct. 3 beatings took place, Morris Heights, and while residents were disturbed by some past violent behavior blamed on the defendants, some said they hadn't previously targeted homosexuals.
Why was the past violent behavior by the thugs dismissed?
I don't get that.
These attacks aren't on the same plane as some bullying incidents, like the Rutgers case, with Dharun Ravi and Molly Wei torturing Tyler Clementi. Ravi and Wei allegedly acted illegally and they spread their own type of evil, but it wasn't violent.
What the Latin King Goonies did was extremely violent. They did what GANGS do.
I realize that they haven't targeted gays before, and their brutal anti-gay attacks are shocking; but good grief, they're not boy scouts. We know that. We know that one victim wanted to be one of them.
There's a lot of dysfunction here.
There should be outrage about the terrible violence, but there shouldn't be surprise. We're talking about a GANG.
Perhaps the law-abiding residents of the neighborhood shouldn't have looked the other way when they were aware of other instances of law-breaking and violence by the defendants.
I want to hear Bloomberg speak out about the scourge of GANGS, not just gangs with an anti-gay bias. They terrorize people, commit cold-blooded acts, and ruin neighborhoods.
I'd like the media to stress the violence of GANGS, and not just connect the thugs' behavior with other recent instances of abuse and crimes against gays.
There's something twisted about that. It's important to acknowledge the ruthlessness of GANG life. At present, it's almost being ignored in this story.
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